The burial society. We coordinate with Pittsburgh's chevra kadisha for the taharah — the ritual washing of the body — performed within hours of death by trained members of the community. The work is sacred. We arrange the room, the time, the participants.
Jewish Funeral Rites · Pittsburgh
Sanctuary in your time of grief.
Established 1953
ברוך דיין האמת Blessed is the True Judge.
From Daniel
Daniel Bernstein
Director · Third Generation
Families come to Sanctuary for different reasons. Some come because their parents and grandparents were buried from this chapel. Some come because their rabbi sent them. Some come because they have lived a Jewish life only in part — at the holidays, at the table — and now, suddenly, the rituals matter and they need a firm that knows what to do.
We do three things particularly well, and they are the three things observant practice asks of a funeral. We coordinate with the chevra kadisha for the taharah and the tachrichim. We arrange burial within twenty-four hours where the law and the cemetery allow. And we sit with the family, before and after, through the shomrim, the shiva minyan, and the unveiling eleven months on.
Whether your family observes Conservative, Reform, or Modern Orthodox — or whether the observance is one you are reaching for rather than one you have kept — we will guide what you want and step back from what you do not. There is no judgment in this work. There is only the work.
Call the chapel at any hour. The line is answered by a member of the family or by Hadassah, who has been in the office since 1996. We are here.
What We Know
Jewish funeral customs in Pittsburgh, since 1953.
The watching. From death to burial, the body is not left alone. Shomrim sit with the body, often reading the Psalms. Sanctuary keeps a roster of shomrim from across the Pittsburgh community, and we welcome family members who wish to fulfill this mitzvah themselves.
The funeral and burial. We coordinate the chapel service, the procession, and the burial — including the first shovelfuls of earth that the family places on the casket — within twenty-four hours of death where Jewish law and the cemetery permit.
This Week's Services
Those whose memory we honor.
Services this week at Sanctuary chapel and at the cemeteries we serve. The family welcomes condolences; please call the chapel for the shiva address.
Our Family
Three generations. Seventy-two years. One chapel.
Aaron Bernstein
Founder · 1953
Aaron came to Pittsburgh in 1947 from a displaced-persons camp in Bremen, having lost his first wife and two daughters at Auschwitz. He worked four years as a kosher butcher in Squirrel Hill and attended the Conservative shul at Beth Shalom before he decided, in 1952, that what Pittsburgh's Jewish community needed was a firm that could ensure proper Jewish burial — the kind that had become impossible during the war.
He opened Sanctuary in 1953 with his second wife Esther, who had also lost family in Europe. The chapel's first burial was that same week. Esther co-founded the firm, coordinated the chevra kadisha, and ran the office until her death in 1998.
David Bernstein
Director · Second Generation
Aaron's son with Esther, David trained as a funeral director at the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science and apprenticed at the firm through the late 1970s. He took over from his father in 1986, when Aaron retired at the age of seventy-eight.
Under David, Sanctuary expanded its work with Reform congregations through the 1990s — without ever stepping back from its Conservative and Modern Orthodox families. He retired in 2018 and turned the firm over to his son Daniel.
Daniel Bernstein
Director · Third Generation
Daniel trained at Hebrew Union College, served six years as a chazzan at Beth Shalom, and earned his funeral director's license in 2014. He took over the firm from his father in 2018 and has directed Sanctuary through the most difficult year in its history — the October 2018 service for the families of the Tree of Life — and through the years since.
He lives in Squirrel Hill with his wife Sarah and their three children. He speaks regularly at the Pittsburgh Jewish Community Foundation on questions of ritual, observance, and what is owed the dead.
The Unveiling
The second goodbye.
Eleven months after burial, families return for the unveiling — the stone-setting at the grave. Sanctuary coordinates the date with the cemetery, arranges the stone if the family wishes, and is present at the gathering itself.
We have witnessed thousands of unveilings across seventy-two years. The second goodbye is often as important as the first — and sometimes more so, because by then the work of grief has begun in earnest.
Plan Ahead
Pre-planning is a mitzvah.
Many of the families we serve have included pre-planning as a mitzvah — a gift to the children. We will sit with you and walk through the burial liturgy, the chevra kadisha arrangements, the choice of cemetery, the shiva, and the unveiling.
There is no charge. There is no obligation. There is, instead, the quiet relief of having decided. We come to your home, or you come to the chapel; we bring the time and the form.
Sanctuary buried my father in 2008 and my grandmother in 1991. When my mother died, I did not need to comparison-shop. Daniel answered the phone at eleven at night, and the chevra kadisha was at the chapel before sunrise.
The Klein Family · Squirrel Hill · April 2026
Where We Serve
On Forbes Avenue, in Squirrel Hill.
5862 Forbes AvenuePittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15217